New York Architect Merges Green Design and Low Cost at ASAP House in Sag Harbor

This weekend’s New York Times Real Estate section featured a story about ASAP (which stands for About Saving a Planet), the name Manhattan architect Laszlo Kiss has given the eco-friendly, low cost modular home prototype he designed in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Kiss, who lives full-time in The Hamptons, created the ASAP home as a response to the “energy-hogging” mansions that surround him in his East End neighborhood.

The four-bedroom ASAP uses a geothermal heating system to heat and cool it. The home’s light fixtures will accept only energy-efficient bulbs and roof-top solar panels will power and heat the house while the sun is shining. At night, the house will take power from the grid, drawing on the surplus it supplied during the day.

But the most interesting thing about the ASAP house is the cost: only $265 a square foot fully-installed. Because it’s only one story tall and arrives from the Pennsylvania factory where it’s manufactured essentially intact, it’s much less expensive than previous modular homes. It only takes about two weeks to fabricate the ASAP home, and then it’s shipped in three sections to the new home site where it’s put back together. While Kiss and his family are moving in to the prototype once it’s completed next month, he hopes to use it to market additional modular homes to “anyone who seeks both modernism and green living in a customizable design.”

• Solar and Relatively Affordable? (NY Times)

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